ATP Seoul Tips: Munar looks short against qualifier Watanuki in Korea

The cancellation of the tournaments that were scheduled to take place in China (and Russia) has presented opportunities for several cities to host ATP Tour events and there are two new ones this week.

Taking the place of Chengdu and Zhuhai are the Tel Aviv Watergen Open and the Eugene Korea Open Tennis Championships, while the Sofia Open retains its place on the tour, too.

Both Tel Aviv and Seoul were regulars on the ATP Tour in the '80's and '90s, but neither event has been staged since 1996, and they've been given single-year licenses for 2022.

Obviously, there are no stats for the two new events, and we're guessing a little bit as to playing conditions at both tournaments, but we have plenty of data and trends for Sofia.

The Sofia Open has been moved around in the calendar a fair bit, starting out in February and then moved to November and now it seems to have settled at the end of September.

Not only has the date varied, but the surface changed, too, with it now listed as an 'acrylic on wood' indoor hard court.

There's 550m of altitude in Sofia, so the balls tend to fly a little, and players have mentioned that it's quite hard to control, but the surface itself looks on the slow side and produced only 77% holds in 2021.

It's not been the best of tournaments for underdog backers, with an average of just 28% of them winning in the six editions that have been played so far.

What we do know about Seoul is that it was played last week on the WTA Tour and it's a Decoturf surface, which is the same one used in Montreal this year and formerly at the US Open and the WTA event used the quicker Wilson US Open balls.

It's set to be between 27C and 29C this week in Seoul, so if the sun shines the conditions should be on the quicker side of medium.

Tel Aviv is played indoors on a surface helpfully listed as 'hard' by the ATP and we're guessing a bit as to how that will play at the moment, but it didn't look slow from what I saw in qualies.

Watanuki looks value against too-short Munar

Of Monday's matches in Seoul, which is played at a bit of awkward time for European viewers, I like the price on Yosuke Watanuki to beat Jaume Munar.

Assuming they are playing with Wilson US Open balls, it might well be too quick for Munar, who bombed out of the US Open in round one with those balls as favourite against Roberto Carballes Baena.

On all hard courts, Munar's win rate at main level is just 31%, and he was beaten (again with the Wilson balls) by Watanuki at Winston-Salem last summer when priced up as a 1.402/5 favourite.

On all hard courts, Munar's win rate at main level is just 31%...

Watanuki was a lucky loser that day and he ended up running away with that match, handing Munar a bagel in the final set thanks to his use of the drop shot combined with good rally discipline and the down-the-line backhand.

That was a round one match in Winston-Salem, so Munar was coming in cold and Watanuki had been in qualies, and it's the same this time, with Watanuki having qualified, while Munar is coming from indoor hard in Metz.

In this short two-week Asian swing Watanuki should be the one better prepared and most likely with more determination and I'm happy to back him in these sort of conditions against Munar at a similar price to that Winston-Salem clash.

Watanuki is around the 3.02/1 mark and that's worthy of a one-point wager.

Seoul is a little ahead of the other two tournaments in the sense that qualies are done and dusted there, while Sofia and Tel Aviv are still to finish qualifying, so there are only six main draw matches in total in the latter two events on Monday.

Of these, the markets are yet to properly form in Tel Aviv at the time of writing and in Sofia I'm not keen on any of the betting underdogs, so I'll take one bet only on Monday.